Push Her Away If She'll Let You
by Thefirstfewchapters
Summary: Red sits in the vehicle and thinks things through. Tag to Season 2 Episode 14. Angst. Lizzington.


**Push Her Away If She'll Let You**

Just, basically, Red angst because that is my thing! Combined with a flavouring of Lizzington because that is also my thing. Just so you know.

Linked to THAT car scene at the end of Episode 2/14

Unbeta-ed, so any mistakes are entirely my fault.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my overly angsty imagination.

He looked through the smoked glass window of the SUV. Out onto a world he had thought he would never see again.

Down on his knees, hands cuffed behind, he had felt the weight of Yaabari's gun against the back of his skull. Cold. Heavy. Final. And everything had slowed. As he clung to the last moments of existence. Felt his blood course like vital fire through every vein. Felt each precious heart beat pound a vivid rhythm. Felt every draw of breath like a surging tide in his chest. Exquisitely accentuated. Because he believed them to be his very final ones.

And the word had come unbidden.

A benediction.

A lamentation.

A murmur of despair at all that would now never be. A ghosted sigh of acceptance that plans would be left unfulfilled. From a mind lost in the bitter sorrow of possibilities slipping away.

A final worshipful prayer . . .

The car door opened and she slipped into the seat at his side.

It was all he could do to look at her. And yet, he had no choice. She must know never again to do what she had done. Never.

He must be determined. No matter how much it hurt.

Push her away.

I have no friends.

I am a monster.

I am hideous.

And yet . . . it was so much harder than he had ever, ever realised it would be. Sitting there, he had been gathering himself. Drawing on twenty years' worth of steely solitude. Dragging from the dark depths every fibre of resolve he possessed.

'You are so damaged.'

Yes.

He was.

Finely tailored suits bandaged the edges together. Long winded stories papered over the cracks. Apparent self-satisfaction and brash smugness glossed over other fractures.

Distractions. Misdirections. Diversions. To hide the reality.

That, deep inside, he was crippled.

Beyond the chance of any true repair.

And she could never become like that.

Wreckage.

And he knew his eyes welled up as he said nothing. Could not trust himself to speak.

Because he was teetering on the edge of a precipice. And it was all he could do to maintain his balance. All he could do to eventually murmur, 'Thank you,' without falling completely onto the shards of waiting rocks below. All he could do to gather his near-failing courage and push her away.

'Never do it again.'

And he was falling.

Alone.

Self contained.

As he had been for so long.

As he should always be.

Because emotions that spilled out of the container just made a unpleasant mess on the fabric of everyone's existence. Especially hers.

'I'm very comfortable with who I am.'

God, how true then and how much of a lie now. Now he was as fragile as the frailest glass and yet needed to be as tempered as the strongest steel.

Please.

Please, Lizzie. Just get out of the car. Just walk away and leave me here.

He would not let a tear fall.

He would not.

Would. Not.

She needed to leave him here.

Alone.

Walk back to the light.

Leave him in the shrouded, suffocating darkness.

Where his words hung like weighted thunderclouds between them.

Because this was too hard.

Too hard.

Too. Hard.

And it was a relief.

When she did.

But not before she broke him. With a single tear. That spilled like the most delicate, dew-glittering spider-woven thread down her cheek and which, like the stroke of the sharpest blade, sliced his heart in two.

Then, without another word, she pulled the door handle and left him.

Alone in his darkness.

For so long he had existed alone. Self possessed. Self absorbed. Working towards a final goal that had been years in the planning. Working on the long play.

And he had shut himself away. Locked the door on emotion. Because those who betrayed him had been those who had been the closest to him. Those who had left him without any recourse but to run.

No one to turn to.

'Has anyone ever helped you?' Her pitying words echoed in his ears like a haunting wind.

No.

Because there had been no one to help. Those who knew the truth had betrayed him. Everyone else turned their backs. Assumed his guilt. Accepted the evidence placed before them without so much as a question. There was no one. No one. And when there is no one else you can rely only on yourself.

In honesty, there had been one. But, Sam. Had taken her. And to protect them both he had left them. Sam could do no more for him.

He had truly been alone.

Cast into the fire and left to burn. By his own side.

And so, the things he had had to do to survive had damaged him. Left him monstrous. Diseased. Vile. Fatally infected with the life he had been forced to lead.

His head fell back in infinite weariness. And eyes that did not see the roof of the vehicle, gazed instead into his blighted past.

Have you ever had a selfless moment in your life?

Yes.

And it had carried him like an insecure, ill-constructed life raft through the desperately grim, debris-strewn maelstrom that his life had become since then.

But, could saving one life balance the books against all the rest that he had been forced to take since? Some as innocent as she. But caught just as equally in the web of deceit and criminality. Just as he had become.

Sometimes, the weight, the pressure, the responsibility, the pain was all but too much.

But what he was forcing upon Lizzie, what he had inflicted upon her life, was not what he had intended. Her profiling skills should have kept her safe; a backroom heroine who simply guided others. And he would simply attach himself; the parasite, feeding off her success. But quickly that had gotten out of hand.

The master tactician, he had always prided himself on being three steps ahead of the game; to have investigated every angle and assessed every scenario.

Preparation was everything. Except . . . when it wasn't. Because, how could you plan for the impossible? The flipped coin coming down to rest on its rim? The misalignment of the stars? Fate laughing at him and playing emotion as the loaded card?

His coldly calculating, quantitative approach stumbling at the hurdle of his unexpectedly wretched desire to be loved by . . . her.

Brought almost to his knees not by machine guns or Hellfire missiles or an enemy's betrayal, but by a slip of a woman.

And it could not be.

She should hate him.

Despise him.

He was a monster.

Hideous.

I seek redemption.

A second chance.

I do not seek to survive it.

But somewhere along that road, he had come to care for her. And it seemed as if, impossibly, she had come to care for him, too.

And that was . . . chilling.

Leaving things spiralling dangerously out of control.

She could not care for him.

He would infect her.

Already had.

Tom.

And yet . . . he yearned.

For her . . . approval.

Something.

Anything.

Her reaction to the therapy . . . shrinking from him, pulling away as he reached for her. Leaving him. Alone. As he should be. And . . . what else should he expect? What else did he deserve? And yet. Why had it hurt so very, very deeply?

Because he was, after all, only human. And she had touched the humanity inside he thought was crushed away forever beneath the heel of the life he had been forced to lead. He wasn't the fortressed island he thought he was.

He had no idea when he had started to feel like this.

To feel.

To care.

To love.

He closed his eyes.

As he had in that mottle-tiled room. When he shuttered out the grime and grimness he had cast his eyes over as Yaabari forced him to his knees.

Because the barren room was not what he had wanted as his last memory. Instead he had conjured up . . . her.

Breathed her name to accompany him over the threshold to whatever lay beyond.

Before . . .

She had appeared.

Like an angel. Ethereal. Unreal.

For twenty plus years he had worn his loneliness like an impenetrable cloak. A shield against the world. Acknowledging only acquaintances. Acquiring only associates to his criminal dealings. Assistants to facilitate his plans. No one closer. Because it hurt beyond measure to let go of those you cared about. Because their leaving severed the arteries of hope, trust and joy. And he had vowed never to feel like that again. Never to lower the drawbridge and invite anyone within the walls of his heart. He had made it a cold and bitter place. Accepted that that was how it would be. From then until the end. Always.

People loyal only to his pocket book.

Bought. Paid. Employed.

Except . . .

Dembe.

Was an exception he had not meant to last. A child. Another child. But one he had also sent away. This time it was to school. University. The script had not read that Dembe would seek him out. And refuse to leave. No matter what brutal things he learned about his mentor.

Thank God, they had told him that Dembe had only been stunned by the taser. Anything more and nothing would have kept him from burning the world down around the Kings and their associates. All of them. One by one. Savagely. Deliberately.

With infinite, exquisitely torturous . . . monstrous . . . hideous . . . slowness.

But Dembe was going to be fine.

But she?

How could she ever be fine again?

But he?

How could he ever be as alone again?

After the spoken acknowledgement that stifled his breathing. Crushed his heart. Shattered him to the core.

Because . . .

Those fateful words . . .

I care about you.

And, maybe, subconsciously, he had dared to hope that she would one day admit to feeling like that.

That she would think of him more kindly.

Because, somewhere, in the tight-shut cellar of his soul there languished, in the empty darkness, an all but lost desire for honest, true companionship.

And . . .

Love . . .

After all . . . the apartment.

What was that if not the last throw of the dice by a desperate gambler.

A need to win a solitary battle in a war he had only recently begun to realise that he was fighting. And to succeed with that one small skirmish would have been enough. For her to accept. To take that gift.

He expected nothing else.

And yet . . . he wanted so much more.

Craved . . . everything.

Like a child who knew the gift they desperately desired was so far beyond what could be afforded that it was merely a hopeful dream; a wish, to hold and cherish inside the heart in the understanding that that was all there would ever be. To stand at the window, parted from the thing you yearned for most. To see. To be within reach. And yet to be as far from it as to stand on a distant shore.

To see was to desire.

To be in her presence had become to ache with a wishing and a wanting so painful that his heart tightened with self-mockery.

And the taste of hope was that of ashes every time reality flicked its casual hand and dealt him a losing card.

She had done that to him.

So unexpectedly.

So gradually.

So unknowingly.

But . . .

No matter that this precious woman had come to be so much more to him than a means to an end. That his slow burning appreciation of her had evolved into something so much deeper.

This dark canvas was . . . his own.

And he must guard it.

Push her away.

Otherwise she would never be dispassionate again. Never be neutral. Never be safe.

Because 'I care about you' painted the landscape differently.

Meant that she would do what he had done. Force passwords from unwilling lips in order to be able to leave a secured box. Refute assistance and compel others to leave the bowels of an auction house.

It meant she would be . . . vulnerable. As he had become. Although, with aching clarity, he realised that she had not yet recognised how vulnerable he had truly become. That somewhere between I Speak Only With Elizabeth Keen and Deal With That, he and she had become entwined in a manner beyond anything he had dispassionately anticipated when this all began; connected in a way he had been ignoring, yet cultivating. Pursuing, yet evading. Holding on to, yet pushing away.

Because dispassionate was now the last that they were.

Dispassionate. Cut off. Separate. Enough at first to pass a lie detector test: Before Monday of last week did you have, or have you ever had, dealings with Elizabeth Keen?

No.

Now . . .

The apartment.

What had he been thinking?

Look closer, Lizzie.

Will you see behind the mask?

If you prick me, do I not bleed?

Here I am, bleeding out.

There was a sound.

A door opening.

A breath of faintly perfumed air.

Once more, a settling in the seat beside him.

Her.

How hard was he going to need to push?

How much more could the fates mock him?

How much more longer could he be tied to the rack and pulled apart in such lingering torture?

A long, long epiphanal silence.

He couldn't look.

She had to leave.

Leave him to come to terms with his newly tightened layers of monstrousness and hideousness and separateness. He had been indulging himself in flights of fancy that he could almost touch. Almost taste. He saw now that that was all they could ever truly be. Flights of fancy. Now that she had said she cared. Now that he realised all that that entailed. The dangers in which it would place her. She could only ever be his colleague. Professional. Distant. That was what was needed. And he must forget everything else he had ever, ever imagined. Ridiculous desires of companionship. Of love. Because they could never, ever exist.

He was as unworthy of her care as it was possible for any man to be.

She was as beyond his reach as it was possible for any woman to be.

And he must cut off the emotional tie she offered.

Now.

Immediately.

And yet . . .

She was sitting next to him.

And a hopeful absence of words lay between them like a sacred offering.

And though his eyes remained closed he sensed her hand.

Slowly reaching out.

Across a divide.

Between two worlds.

In soundless declaration.

He felt the gentle gathering in of his hand.

And he tried to pull away. But she resisted. Calmly. Quietly. Insistently.

Silently, the message was delivered.

Your hideousness does not frighten me.

Your monstrousness does not repel me.

You cannot fight against me.

I have come to care for you.

So, I have come back to you now.

Therefore, I will not be turned aside in the future.

Deal with that.

A message carried with a healing hand.

That held.

And supported.

And unlocked the fragile defences so newly constructed.

He felt her thumb gently rub against his hand as his own had rubbed hers while she lay unconscious in the hospital bed.

In reassurance.

In compassion.

In affirming alliance.

He gathered all his resolve. And rolled his head.

Opened his eyes.

Forced himself to look.

Into newly determined eyes.

Fixed with purpose.

Fierce with resolution.

Firm, yet still sheened by the evidence of that newly discovered understanding.

Fragile pearl drops, that clung to her eyelashes.

And his heart pulled itself almost to pieces at the sight.

And then . . . she blessed him with a quiet smile.

And said, 'The apartment. Not tomorrow. Or . . . next week. But . . . I will . . .' And she gifted him the words. Presented her peace offering. Because, when someone does something nice you're supposed to say, ' . . . Thank you.'


End file.
